Window on your world: Lessons for an effective corporate home page

[SAMPLE REPORT ONLY]

Window on your world: Lessons for an effective corporate home page

By Jason Sumner and David Bowen

January 2015

Inside:

The three roles of a corporate home page.

Evaluating home page trends: are they right for your organization?

Advice and best practice on specific home page features.

Drawing on expertise from Bowen Craggs & Co and interviews with digital managers who run some of the most effective home pages in the Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of corporate online effectiveness.

THIS IS A SAMPLE REPORT ONLY WHERE CONTENT HAS BEEN WITHHELD THIS IS INDICATED BY ‘[…]’ To get the full report, contact Dan Drury: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

2 Window on your world © Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 (SAMPLE REPORT ONLY)

Contents

Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Introduction................................................................................................................................. 3

Like this sample report? ............................................................................................................... 5 Whatever answers you need, you just found them ..................................................................................... 5

About Bowen Craggs .................................................................................................................... 6

Part One: The three roles of a corporate home page .................................................................... 7 Set of signposts, billboard, magazine front cover ........................................................................................ 7 How to balance the three roles .................................................................................................................... 9 Editorial control underpins the three roles ................................................................................................ 11

Part Two: Bandwagons, best practice and lessons learned .......................................................... 13 Getting granular: Fitting content to audience groups ............................................................................... 13 To scroll or not to scroll? ............................................................................................................................ 13 News you can’t use: do press releases belong on the home page? .......................................................... 13 The ‘mobile first’ myth ............................................................................................................................... 13 Follow me: the role of social media icons and feeds ................................................................................. 13 Play time: Guidelines for video on the home page .................................................................................... 13

Part Three: In-depth analysis of top-performing home pages ...................................................... 14 Roche: Maintaining focus ........................................................................................................................... 14 Goldman Sachs: Strikingly different ........................................................................................................... 14 Qualcomm: The exact equivalent of a billboard ........................................................................................ 14 SAP: Triumph of simplicity ......................................................................................................................... 14

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 15

Further resources ....................................................................................................................... 16


Introduction

The most valuable piece of real estate you own

For most corporate websites, the home page is the single most visited page.

Advances in search and social media have threatened its pre-eminence by

sending more visitors directly to pages deeper within the site, and indeed for

other types of websites (media in particular) the home page has been

declared all but dead.

Corporate websites are more complex than most other sites, however,

because they have a number of different types of visitors – customers,

suppliers, technical audiences, jobseekers, journalists, investors and other

stakeholders – all of which are seeking specific information tailored to them.

Our analytics data show that seven in 10 visitors to corporate websites still

arrive via the home page1, and the conversations we have had with web

managers at some of the world’s largest companies suggest similar figures.

The home page may be less important than it was a decade ago, but it is

arguably still the most important piece of real estate an organization owns.

‘The corporate website is the window on our world, and the home page

definitely remains critically important,’ says Simon Quayle, director of

digital communications at GSK, and one of several digital managers that we

interviewed for this report.

About this report

Window on your world: Lessons for an effective corporate home page is

intended as a guide for digital managers who want to make their home pages

more successful. This does of course raise the question of what ‘successful’

means – we will attempt to answer it. Part one outlines what we see as the

three essential roles of the home page, and how you should think about the

balance between them. Part two deconstructs current home page trends such

as the fashion for scrolling, social media icons and feeds, and the use of

video, to help you decide whether they are right for your organization. Part

three provides a detailed analysis of the four top-performing home pages in

the Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of corporate online effectiveness.

Throughout the report there are concise cases of best and worst practice in

the form of ‘Home page high points’ and ‘Home page howlers’.

For the report, we have drawn upon the following resources:

• Bowen Craggs & Co’s years of expertise in helping the world’s largest

companies to improve their corporate websites;

• Insight from our Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of corporate

online effectiveness;

• In-depth interviews with digital managers who run some of the most

effective home pages at the world’s largest companies.

About the authors

Jason Sumner and David Bowen are senior consultants at Bowen Craggs &

Co.

1 Web Analytics Benchmark. December 2014. Bowen Craggs & Co. (Data

collected May 2013 to April 2014).

The home page may be less

important than it was a decade

ago, but it is arguably still the

most important piece of real

estate an organization owns.

Window on your world:

Lessons for an effective

corporate home page is

intended as a guide for digital

managers who want to make

their home pages more

successful.


Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their time and insight:

• Andreas Askeland, Web manager, Corporate affairs, Saudi Aramco

• Neil Atkinson, Head of digital engagement, Unilever

• Florian Hiessl, Head of online communications, Siemens

• Jeordan Legon, Global head of digital and social media for pharma,

Novartis

• Janet Morgan, Director of content strategy and editorial planning, GSK

• Simon Quayle, Director of digital communications, GSK

• Joan Renner, Content manager, Corporate marketing digital initiatives,

IBM

• Brian Wasson, Director, global marketing and communications, SAP


Like this sample report?

Our research is independent, our opinions trusted and our recommendations

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Digital is different at group level. Applying received wisdom and best

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may – and too often does – do more harm than good.

Whatever answers you need, you just found them Q. Why are many companies getting mobile optimisation wrong – and how

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Q. What should my corporate website look like in five years’ time?

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About Bowen Craggs

We are experts in global online corporate communications. We help you

improve the effectiveness of your websites, mobile and social channels.

You can rely on the independence of our advice because we do not build

websites. What we do is help you to improve your effectiveness with clear

strategy, expert benchmarking, market research, analytics and best practice.

Our research – gathered over 10 years, published in the Financial Times and

used by more than 50 of the Fortune Global 500 – can help you find and

maintain the right course.

Every year we publish the Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of

corporate online effectiveness, which is established as the most credible

ranking of large corporate websites, and provides a deep database of best

practice.

Are you looking in the wrong place for digital comms advice?

The world is awash with online marketing and communications advice. But

digital is different at group level. Applying received wisdom and best

practices learned from wider social media, online publishing and e-

commerce trends may – and too often does – do more harm than good.

Wouldn’t it be great to have an advisor who lives and breathes group-level

online marketing and comms?

You're faced with an escalating digital challenge - do more, across more

channels, with fewer resources and the same budget. You have to prioritize

efforts and take the quick wins - but are you making costly strategic

mistakes? Whether it's chasing a flawed ‘mobile first’ strategy or destroying

usability in pursuit of the latest web design fashion - we've seen global

companies making big, expensive, brand-damaging mistakes.

Our research is independent, our opinions trusted and our recommendations

proven. We specialize in group-level digital communications and learn from

analyzing the online estates of the world's biggest corporations. Our network

of 500+ communications professionals from around the globe grows our

knowledge; as does our constant audience research focused on the

investment community, media professionals, policy makers, jobseekers and

customers.

Bowen Craggs & Co is a

unique online effectiveness

research and consultancy

group. We help you improve

your online effectiveness –

principally websites, social

channels, mobile and apps.

http://www.bowencraggs.com/FT-Bowen-Craggs-Index

http://www.bowencraggs.com/FT-Bowen-Craggs-Index


Part One

The three roles of a corporate home page

Set of signposts, billboard, magazine front cover

We believe the corporate home page has three roles: as a set of signposts,

showing people where they want to go; as a billboard transmitting positive

messages about your organization, and as a magazine front cover, inviting

people to explore the rich content within.

A set of signposts

The signpost role is the most straightforward. Most people coming to a

home page have a good idea of what they are looking for, so the page should

show them where to go. Here there is a body of good practice, summed up

with the golden rule of usability: give people what they expect, or ‘be

conventional’. Display links clearly, don’t surprise users with where they

lead and don’t be obscure with the labelling. If you use dropdown mega-

menus, make sure they are stable and that navigation is not dependent on

them (some people find the mouse hard to use).

All developments here build on this conventionality, and most are to do with

providing quick routes to inner content. They can either point to particular

pages or provide ‘one click’ access to all second-level pages. Usability

studies can provide feedback on what works and what does not. Companies

with large web estates can also use the home page in the signposting role as

a ‘hub’ to aid navigation between multiple country, brand and business sites.

If visitors arrive, say, at a group’s India website and want to reach another

country or business line, they should be able to navigate quickly to the home

page and find their way from there. This function has to some extent

replaced the large corporate web directories more prevalent in the earlier

days of the web.

The signpost role is demand-driven – you are giving visitors what they want.

The other two roles are supply-driven: you are giving them what you want.

This is easier in some ways, but also riskier because success cannot be

measured by usability tests.

Figure 1: The set of signposts: The www.bayer.com home page directs

traffic with a series of vertically arranged coloured panels below the

main image and near the desktop scroll line: ‘Search’, ‘Products’ and

‘Themes’.

In this section, we answer the

question, ‘what is a home page

for?’ We outline what we

believe are the fundamental

three roles of a corporate home

page, how those roles can be

effectively balanced on the

page, and why editorial

management is essential. We

draw upon our experience

helping the online

communication teams at some

of the world’s largest

organizations.

http://www.bayer.com/


A billboard

The billboard role is where greatest subtlety is needed. For many

organizations and many people, the home page will be the first place they

meet. ‘I have heard of a job opportunity at Company X. I go to its website.

Whether I apply or not will be subconsciously influenced by what I feel in

the first few seconds.’ Or ‘I am a potential supplier. I go to the site. Does

this company look the sort of organization I want to do business with?’ And

so on for any other group. That is why the home page is like a billboard,

which is designed to impress a motorist in the few seconds they are driving

past it. You have seconds to make an impression, and no second chance.

What messages do you want to transmit? Simplicity is often the best

approach. ‘Busy’ pages with too many headings and panels jostling for the

visitor’s attention can drown out primary messages.

Figure 2: The billboard: The www.apple.com home page sends the

immediate first impression: we are everything you have heard about us

‘slick, minimal, and design-conscious’.

A magazine front cover

The home page can be thought of as a magazine front cover if the site can be

thought of as a magazine. This is a useful idea, for two main reasons. First,

it tells the company to make it interesting and engaging, not just a giant

filing cabinet. Second, it makes the concept of the web much easier to

explain to print-driven colleagues. It also makes the role of the home page

clear. A good magazine’s front cover is carefully constructed to say to

readers ‘Take me off the shelf, read me’; a good website home page should

say ‘You know you want to click this link. Go on, do it’. Graphics are

important, so are stories and – most of all – headlines. Websites benefit from

having an editor, in the journalistic sense: someone who knows the tricks of

making a front cover irresistible. Magazine-type stories and videos need a

‘call to action’ – eg, ‘read me’, ‘find out more’ etc. We have found that

visitors are left confused and do not automatically click on stories without

these directional aids. The headline should give a sense of the kind of

content visitors will find when they do click.

http://www.apple.com/


Figure 3: The magazine front cover: The www.sabmiller.com home

page stories invite readers in.

How to balance the three roles

Set of signposts: the essential role

Of the three roles, only the set of signposts is absolutely essential, because

this role is fulfilling the needs of the audience, as opposed to the billboard

and magazine front cover roles, which are serving the organization. Every

website, not just corporate websites, must fulfil the basic function of sending

visitors to the right place within the site as quickly and conveniently as

possible. ‘The first and major task of the home page is routing people to

where they want to go,’ says Florian Hiessl, head of online communications

for Siemens, the German engineering giant.

Fulfilling the signpost role takes up relatively little of the home page’s ‘real

estate’. It can be achieved with some combination of familiar, conventional

menus – utility menus at the top, a main navigation bar or mega dropdown

panel, universal footers and right links. Innovation is possible in

signposting, usually through complementary elements or shortcuts based on

a deep understanding of a site’s visitors and where they are likely to want to

go. An example is the tag cloud on Royal Dutch Shell’s website (see ‘Home

page high point, this page).

Billboard and magazine front cover: ‘optional’ (but vital)

A website is the most cost-effective tool to communicate with anyone in the

world, so if your organization’s site is only or primarily a set of signposts,

then you are saying you have no interest in either a) making an impression

on them or b) nudging them to do anything else. In this way, the billboard

and magazine front cover roles are optional (in the sense that the visitor does

not require them to complete his or her task). But every corporate website

should take advantage of the opportunity to create the best impression of the

organization and also invite readers to read more about the interesting and

beneficial things it is doing. Ideally every corporate website will have

elements of both roles, but the balance between the billboard role and the

magazine front cover role on a corporate website will vary according to the

sector and primary audiences it is trying to serve.

Which types of companies are best suited to the billboard role?

The billboard role is most important for companies for whom customers and

jobseekers are the most frequent and important visitors. These include IT

companies (usually customers), investment banks and corporate sites of

retail banks (usually jobseekers) and pharmaceuticals (usually jobseekers).

The Goldman Sachs home page (gs.com), for example, through images of

Home page high point: Shell’s tag cloud

www.shell.com

Tag clouds are by no means

new, but they remain a clever

complement to conventional

signposting on a home page

(they should never be used as

a replacement for conventional

navigation) by putting together

a disparate set of links that the

organization knows are useful

to its visitors.

Shell has ‘Pay your bill’

prominently in the tag cloud

because it happens to know a

lot of US customers land on

the corporate site by mistake

thinking they can pay their

credit card bill (this is a subset

of the issue that Americans

may be assume a ‘dotcom’

address means it is a US rather

than global site). Visitors

expect tag clouds to be

bundles of disparate links, so

the lack of common theme is

not a problem.

http://www.sabmiller.com/

http://www.shell.com/


friendly, diverse employees and prominent space devoted to responsibility

initiatives, communicates the message ‘we are human, come and work for

us’. (See home page analysis, Part three). Pharmaceutical companies have

more than their share of critics, and in order to recruit the best people, they

need to give the impression they are a force for good in the world. So the

billboard role is very important. This is why the immediate impressions of

home pages of GSK and Roche, for example, often highlight community

work, especially in developing countries, where stories of ill deeds are often

set.

The most effective corporate website ‘billboards’ communicate to two or

more important audiences at once. Although Apple’s primary audience for

its billboard appears to be customers, the company is simultaneously saying

to jobseekers, ‘this is an innovative company at the forefront of technology’

and investors visiting the site will be happy to see that customers are being

satisfied (though the rest of the site fails to follow up on this message).

Goldman Sachs’s touchy-feely messaging will also fulfil a similar role for

its other core audiences.

Suited to the magazine front cover: energy and FMCG

Although the billboard role is certainly important for energy companies

(which are as concerned as pharma companies about their reputations),

energy companies are particularly well-suited to the magazine front cover

role. Because they are engaged in complex feats of engineering (drilling

wells 5,000 metres under the sea, etc) they tend to have rich content that is

interesting to a wide audience. This provides a big opportunity to invite

people in to discover more about them. An example is the Total home page

(total.com), which is very much the front cover of a publication, posting

stories under the ‘Our Energies’ banner (See Figure, 4).

Figure 4: The www.total.com home page highlights rich, interesting

content under ‘Our Energies’ banner.

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies such as Unilever and

Procter & Gamble are also suited to a strong weighting towards the

magazine front cover role for two reasons. First, they do not, as a group,

tend to have the same reputational issues as the energy and pharmaceutical

sectors. Second, by the nature of what they do, they have a lot of magazine

type material, such as recipes or lifestyle-related stories, with wide appeal.

http://www.total.com/


The balance between the set of signposts, the billboard and the magazine

front cover roles will be unique to individual companies. Although some

sectors and audience groups lend themselves to common choices, the most

important thing is to ask the question – which roles are most important for

your company and then organize home page content accordingly.

Editorial control underpins the three roles

One of the biggest weaknesses of most home pages is that they are not

thought of in an editorial way. If the website is the company’s biggest

publication, and the home page is the cover of the biggest publication, then

it follows that the home page needs an editor deciding what goes on and

(most crucially in large organizations with many departments vying for

attention) what does not. A strong editor’s role is to understand, first, who

are the various audiences that come to the site, what they require and how to

balance these varying needs. And then to ask how the company can serve

messages to those audiences in the most appealing way.

A strong editor is also a politician, balancing pressures from within the

organization, from the head of investor relations for example, demanding

there is a share price on the home page, or the head of media insisting that

press releases appear. A strong editor is able to say no, perhaps arguing that

press releases on the home page fulfil none of the three roles: they do not

direct people where they need to go; they do not create a strong positive

impression of the company, nor do they invite people to click into the site

(most press releases are rather dull). The one audience potentially interested

in the press release, journalists, can be directed to the correct section via

effective signposting. The same could be said of a share price chart or any

number of features stakeholders in the business might wish to promote. It is

difficult to focus the home page on the three essential roles without the

ability to say ‘no’ to content that does not serve the audience’s requirement

for specific information, or the company’s need to communicate something

interesting to those audiences.

Figure 5: A unique video recently featured on the www.ibm.com. The

‘smallest video in the world’ was created by manipulating atoms with a

scanning tunneling microscope.

A case for content based on the brand at IBM

Joan Renner is the editor of the ibm.com home page. When editorial debates

arise about whether a piece of content is right for the home page, she makes

the case based on the brand messages IBM wants to convey. ‘The most

important thing for the home page to do is to correctly reflect the brand,’ she

says. Three brand values are well known throughout the organization –

Home page howler: IPSO’s dull billboard

www.ipso.co.uk

The UK’s Independent Press

Standards Organization

(IPSO), an independent

watchdog set up in the wake

of the recent tabloid phone

hacking scandal to prevent

similar misconduct by the

media, started work in

September 2014.

The organization’s website

home page is surprisingly

basic. Three dense columns

of difficult-to-read text

appear on an out-dated (and

visually dull) yellow, black

and white background.

There are no images, and

the single headline is

perfunctory and

uninspiring.

The page should be used to

present a crucial first

impression to visitors about

credibility, competence and

priorities. By investing so

little time and effort into its

home page and website,

IPSO has squandered a

crucial opportunity to

persuade the world that it

means business.

http://www.ibm.com/

http://www.ipso.co.uk/


‘dedication to every client’s success’, ‘innovation that matters – for IBM

and the world’, and ‘trust and responsibility in all relationships’. If the

content does not reflect one of those brand values, it is easier to say that it

will not go on the home page.

There are also more specific technology areas the company is focusing on,

and this direction comes down from the CEO: the ‘cloud’, big data and

analytics, mobile, social business, and security. Her team also uses audience

analytics – stories that are too niche do not do well in terms of clicks. They

try to ensure that on a weekly basis they feature thought leadership content,

or stories about employees using IBM technology to address big problems

such as the Ebola crisis or protecting the rain forest. The most frequent

debates, however, occur at a more micro level about syntax and grammar.

‘We have more issues over messaging,’ Ms Renner says. ‘On the home page

we want to be conversational and provocative and a little fun. We don’t

want clichés, meaningless long headlines. A short headline, a descriptive

subhead and a really short call to action is the winner.’ The difficulty can be

increased when the home page editorial team is trying to change a message

that has been finalised for a campaign in partnership with an agency, for

example. ‘When the editorial team feels strongly about the message, we do

an A/B test, then the visitors can vote.’


Part Two

Bandwagons, best practice and lessons learned Getting granular: Fitting content to audience groups

[…]

To scroll or not to scroll?

[…]

News you can’t use: do press releases belong on the home page?

[…]

The ‘mobile first’ myth

[…]

Follow me: the role of social media icons and feeds

[…]

Play time: Guidelines for video on the home page

[…]

In this section we evaluate

current issues, trends and

fashions in corporate website

home page management to

help you decide if they are

right for your organization. We

draw upon the experiences and

lessons learned from digital

managers at some of the

world’s largest organizations,

including GSK, Unilever,

Siemens, IBM and Roche. We

also offer advice and best

practice from our own

experience helping online

communication teams around

the world.


Part Three

In-depth analysis of top-performing home pages Roche: Maintaining focus

[…]

Goldman Sachs: Strikingly different

[…]

Qualcomm: The exact equivalent of a billboard

[…]

SAP: Triumph of simplicity

[…]

In this section we look at the

four home pages that tie for

top marks in the Financial

Times Bowen Craggs Index

of corporate online

effectiveness: Roche,

Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm

and SAP. The Index ranks

the websites of 78 of the

world’s largest companies

on a range of metrics. The

home pages featured each

scored 11 points out of a

possible 12 on the metric

‘strength of home page’. Our

analysis of Roche includes

commentary from Jeordan

Legon, formerly head of web

strategy and external digital

media at Roche (and now at

Novartis).


Conclusion

The ideal home page

[…]

THIS IS A SAMPLE REPORT ONLY. WHERE CONTENT HAS BEEN WITHHELD, THIS IS INDICATED BY ‘[…] To get the full report contact Dan Drury: [email protected]

More important than any

feature or set of features,

is the thinking behind

them. Have you asked

how the balance of the

three roles applies to

your organization and

the audiences it is trying

to reach?



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Window on your world: Lessons for an effective corporate home page

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